Dan Griffiths

Often when we get enquiries we are not given much information in the way of a brief. Clients don’t really know how to put a brief together and why should they? The first thing I try to do is to see if we have common ground with regards to the budget they have to spend. By asking for a ballpark figure I find that I waste a lot less time with enquiries that are not in the right price bracket.

Depending on what I am given I try to put a story together that would describe exactly what the site will do. This can be very basic but serves better than a simple list of features as it helps the client understand exactly how it will work. Consider this snippet of a verbose list:

“Scheduled RSS feed syncing.
Automatic deletion of events from calendar after due date.”

Some tech savvy clients might get that straight away but this is a better way in my opinion:

“Every hour the news section of the site will have stories from other sites added automatically. Building on this when an event has finished it will be removed from the site automatically.”

Friendlier and more relevant don’t you think?

I always think of briefs in the same way as business plans – let’s make a shorter living document that we actually refer back to rather than a 90 page monster that impresses the investors but no-one else.

Most people read differently when online, whereas reading a newspaper may be more of a cover to cover experience the web needs to have concise content that allows skim reading. I think there are a few ways you can do this:

Reduce the word count – do you really need all the words?
Stick to simple one idea paragraphs – it seems to be the best way of focusing a reader.
Put emphasis on the important content – by your tone of writing and using formatting.
Keep it friendly – try to make it approachable for anyone even if they are not familiar with the content.

I appreciate that it is hard to get the message across sometimes with a limited amount of text but it is a good thing to review your copy. I found with the Buffalo site that we kept reducing the copy until there was just the outline information about us and our work. Just keep thinking “will the user read this or even be interested?” and you will likely end up with better content.

At Buffalo we often get asked about starting an e-commerce business – it can be confusing so hopefully this will help to make things a little clearer around the technical bits. Quick note – if you are familiar with e-commerce then this probably isn’t the article for you.
Firstly you need to choose a payment provider – you really have three options:

1. PayPal. Useful for small businesses or to test an idea out as it is straight forward to set up – however it isn’t particularly flexible and can be seen as amateurish. The great thing is that anyone can apply for a PayPal account so very new businesses that wouldn’t otherwise pass credit checks for a merchant account can still trade online.

2. Merchant account and processor. The most popular option, firstly you get a merchant account with your bank to allow credit/debit card payments. Then you are able to apply to a payment provider, there are plenty to choose from but we suggest Sage Pay. Once these two things are set up you can integrate with an e-commerce system.

3. Full integration – this is for businesses who require more in-depth billing, accounting or integration with other systems. With a bespoke integration you can control more of less any aspect that is required at the cost of a longer development time.

Once you have the payment mechanism and the site ready it is good to know the kind of process an order goes through. When someone makes an order on your site an email gets sent to the user and yourself to confirm it has been placed. It is also available in the admin area of your site with PDF delivery note and payment details. At this point the payment has already been authorised and the money is then held in either the PayPal account or is sent to your bank account via your provider.

A few quick pointers from dealing with clients and especially startups….

Obviously a great idea and site goes a long way towards a profitable e-commerce business but it isn’t any easy path for a startup and requires a lot of dedication. Once you get started keep an eye on what products sell well and focus on them. This will also help you plan your buying for the next season or period. Oh and don’t under estimate spending for marketing your site too – if no-one knows about the site they can’t buy from it!

One of the ways that projects go well in my experience is by both client and agency being honest with each other. This starts from the first contact and all the way until a project ends. This kind of honesty is welcomed and we have been awarded projects because we questioned the clients ideas or were honest about their current site.

So many agencies are afraid to ask questions and are happy to just tell the client what they want to hear. This doesn’t work for us as we need to have full commitment to a project to do a good job.

If the client doesn’t respond well to constructive criticism from a professional then it may not be worth taking the project on. Whilst obviously in the early stages of business you might need to take on projects that are less than ideal I would definitely trust your gut feeling.

However it does only truly work when the client can be equally honest!